Suffern Director Guides 'The Doctors' NYACK, N. Y., MONDAY, MAY 12, 1969
If you tune In Channel 4 on June 4 at 2:30 p.m. you will find yourself watching a brain operation on the day time soap opera, “The Doctors.’’ Hope Memorial’s two famed doctors, Nick Bellini (played by Gerald Gordon) and Matt Powers (James Pritchett) will be operating on one of the leading characters who will have suffered a mishap before then. The operation itself was actually performed and filmed on tape yesterday at NBC's Studios in Rockefeller Center and was directed by Hugh McPhilllps of Hemlon Road, Suffern.
It is the third operation done on “The Doctors’’ and all three have been directed by McPhilllps who did an internship one morning at Good Samaritan Hospital in Suffern to watch a spinal operation. Everything looked the same as it does in a real hospital laboratory except that the patient was a dummy and the physicians were actors. No detail was overlooked to make it look authentic even to putting on rubber gloves, wiping sweat off brows. As director of the show, McPhilllps runs the operations in a dimly lit room facing rows of screens, his fingers on a panel of buttons and a microphone.
“We have to do in one hour what a weekly night show takes 30 hours to do," McPhillips explains, noting that rehearsals start at 8.15 a.m and run till 5 p.m. five days a week. Each week they tape six shows to allow for vacation in July. When not behind the command console, McPhilllps is out on the set, going over scenes with the cast, making changes on the spot. He notes that yesterday by noon, some 40 changes and revisions had been made in the prepared script. Around 1:30 p.m. there was a decision to cut down on a scene and extend another by 20 seconds.
McPHlLLIPS is a native of Suffern, attended Sacred Heart School and Suffern High School before spending four years in the Army in World War11. He appeared in the Neighborhood Playhouse and in summer stock in the old County Theater in Suffern and is a charter member of the Antrim Playhouse. He has been with NBC for 18 years, starting out as a stage manager before he became a director on network game shows and soap operas. His previous shows have included “From These Roots” and “My Five Daughters.” McPhilllps met his wife, Rosemary, when she was a production assistant for the Fred Allen TV Show. Later she was associate director for the Philco Playhouse and the Sid Caesar Show before retiring to raise four children. He notes he first met the producer of “The Doctors,” Allan Potter, back at the County Theater ln Suffern 26 years ago.
By
Paul Raven ·
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